Features » January 2, 2014

Hood Feminist

A lot of times when I speak about things that have happened to me, there’s a significant chunk of people who are like, 'Oh, I can connect to you,' and then 'you' become the face of 'them,' and then 'they' become people.

For the last decade, Chicago writer Mikki Kendall has juggled a career in public service with corunning the popular blog The Angry Black Woman and writing about race and activism for Salon, the Guardian and The Hairpin, to name a few. More recently, Kendall co-created Hood Feminism, a blog aimed at giving, as its introductory post states, “women on the margins … the space to tell their own stories.” Kendall frequently critiques “digital feminism,” which began in the early-to-mid 2000s with the emergence of blogs like Feministing and Feministe that focused on creating online communities for young feminists to trade ideas and connect with other activists. Though the blogs ostensibly began as a response to the elitism of older feminists who operated in insular, generally academic circles, Kendall argues that digital feminists, in turn, have engaged in exclusionary tactics by disproportionately concentrating on issues important to white, privileged women.

In August, Kendall brought these criticisms to the forefront of social media when she created the Twitter hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen to demonstrate her frustration with what she saw as mainstream digital feminists’ refusal to advocate for women of color in the face of oppression. Women of color jumped at the opportunity to discuss the double standards they had faced from white feminists, both in online and offline communities, and over the course of a day or two, the hashtag became one of the most popular topics on Twitter in the United States, with users contributing from all over the world.

Five months later, the hashtag is still being used as fodder for panel discussions and invoked to condemn racism and classism in the progressive movement. In These Times sat down with Kendall to talk about the challenges she’s faced as an activist and how feminists can best combat oppression from within their own ranks.

What inspired you to start #solidarityisforwhitewomen?

A lot of what happened with the hashtag was a result of frustration. The level playing field of the Internet means white feminists can’t ignore us—but they don’t know what to do with us. We’re eight years deep into this “digital feminism” concept, and people who’ve been around from the beginning see white feminists stand up and say they invented feminism, and then present stock photos of black women—even though they work with black women—in presentations about feminism. Some people think that #solidarityisforwhitewomen is about jealousy of the mainstream feminist leaders who tend to dominate the conversation, but the reality is that I’ve heard white feminists talk about me in the most othering ways. When the conservatives are less offensive than feminists, we have a problem. Feminists are supposed to be on our side, and we can’t trust them either.

Given all this, do you think the term “feminism” is an accurate term to encompass an anti-racist movement?

I’m leaning more and more on the “hood feminist” concept. My cultural contexts are not yours. There are feminists everywhere. The label is not as important as keeping in mind that these women have goals. They don’t need to be dreaming the dreams that white feminist leaders are dreaming.

When you’re discussing popular feminist issues, you have to look at more than, “Why don’t those people do what I do?” “Those people” are poor. “Those people” may be less educated. The choices that they make are different from the choices that you make. For example, there’s a whole huge conversation about how black women don’t breastfeed. What nobody talks about is that black women are more likely to be poor. Breastfeeding is an exercise best undertaken when you have resources. If you are working, unless you have a job that has some snazzy progressive thing like a breastfeeding room, you can’t pump during the day. And good pumps aren’t cheap! There are all these steps to breastfeeding that for a working mother are complicated.

You got a lot of publicity for starting #solidarityisforwhitewomen, but this isn’t your first experience with online activism. In 2011, your piece for Salon, “Abortion Saved My Life,” drew fire when anti-abortion crusader Jill Stanek accused you of lying. Because you used your own story, the attacks became very personal—what made you decide to use a personal narrative to make a broader point?

Girls like me aren’t real. We’re a problem, we’re a project, we’re whatever, but we’re not people. You see all this talk about the “problem” of single black mothers, or the “problem” with poverty, but there are no people in that conversation. A lot of times when I speak about things that have happened to me, there’s a significant chunk of people who are like, “Oh, I can connect to you,” and then “you” become the face of “them,” and then “they” become people.

Why are people uncomfortable with the realization that the anonymous figure they’re trying to demonize—single mothers who get abortions, for example, or women on welfare who have many children—is a real person?

It’s racism. Flat out. It used to be that welfare was only for white people, during the New Deal. When that narrative changed in the ’70s, it became about these black women who were hiding in their houses who weren’t going to work. The purpose of welfare was originally to help women feed their children. And then black people started to get it, and even though black people only make up about 30 percent of food-stamp recipients, it somehow became about that mythical black woman in the grocery store, with the designer clothes, with the done hair and the manicured nails and whatever.

The “hair and nails” thing? If you’re a woman, chances are pretty good that you know how to do one or the other, if not both. Nail polish is $1.89. With hair, you can buy a box of dye, you can stand in your bathroom, and you can look professional. Those parts of the economy don’t get talked about, because people are talking about poor people, they’re not talking to poor people.

The reality is that many welfare recipients are veterans. They’re retired vets, or spouses of vets, or active duty vets, and nobody wants to admit that we’re failing our active duty.

What about politicians who go on “SNAP challenges,” trying to live on food stamps to show the dangers of cutting supplementary benefits?

It’s complete and total bullshit. You’re on SNAP benefits for a week, but you’re not moving out of your house, you’re not giving up the spices that are in your cabinet, you’re not having to worry about the heat or the power you’re using or the fact that your poverty is never-ending. You’re not having to worry about going to the SNAP office for eight hours, two or three times in a row, before you actually get benefits. You’re not standing in line at the grocery store having the cashier judge you for buying fucking blueberries because blueberries weren’t on sale that week. Food-stamp challenges don’t teach you what it’s like to be poor. Food-stamp challenges teach you what it’s like to be hungry for a hot second.

You’ve written before about how digital feminism’s discussions of motherhood leave out the broader experiences of poor parents. How can the progressive movement better address the needs of poor people?

In Chicago, the subsidy that low-income workers receive for licensed day care for kids 3 and older is around $30 a day. That’s just not enough. And care workers aren’t making much because the people who pay them aren’t making much. I don’t think anyone is really talking about what it really takes to survive—how many hours a day it takes to be devoted to household things. Those things take time. If you work two jobs, that’s your whole day.

How are Twitter and other social media changing feminism?

There’s crazy money to be made in media, in consulting and in speaking. Everyone wants to be an “expert.” And it’s much easier to get paid for being an “expert” on people who can’t speak for themselves. But Twitter makes it impossible to ignore the voices of the people you’re talking about. You can’t be an expert on those people when those people are at the table with you.

And when it comes to Kendall it is most definitely personal for me. I had no idea who she was until she Google-bombed my name two years ago with her Tumblr account. I got into an argument with people on Facebook who claimed John Lennon and Yoko Ono were racists. And because I disagreed, Kendall smeared me as a racist in Google results on my name.

And the reason she did that is because she's too cowardly to actually have a debate with me about it, and too smug and incurious get to know anything about me and my history of opposing racism, which anybody who bothers to read my blog will see.

It's too easy and comfortable to smear me instead. She wants to shut the conversation down through intimidation.

She's a Tumblr bully, an unethical journalist and an all-around Olympic-level asshole. And turning her into some kind of hero is completely stupid.

Posted by Nancy McClernan on 2014-01-17 18:00:30

LOL - what bullshit. When Kendall says "white women" she means white women. And since I am one, I take it personally. Duh.

And BTW it isn't "white feminists" that Kendall hates, it's white women, period. And you have no proof there's an actual "White Feminism" - you and your fellow SJWs just pull shit directly out of your ass and then repeat it on Tumblr like zombies until you start believing your own hype.

How pathetic that you only speak in in-group lingo. But I guess the SJW bubble you live in approves.

"white feminism" isn't only about women who are white, it's about a mainstream feminism that does not interrogate the intersectionality of race and gender. so when we talk about "white feminist" its not specific to "white people" I know women of color who uphold white feminism and the beliefs she talked about above. Here's an article that explain explicitly what we mean and in actually your comment shows how White Feminism allows you to take everything personal, be offended and make everything about YOU and not the struggle and experiences of Black women. I love white women and I love white women who are feminist, what I hate is mainstream feminism and "White Feminism" is a term not a literal name.

Ah, the left does indeed eat itself. For whatever flaws white feminists, or white women in general, have they contribute little to the things that keep blacks down. There is nothing white feminists, or any white person, can do about black culture which is the cause of the high rates of teenage pregnancy and violence. Furthermore, I do not hear a peep out of Kendall or any other black women, condemning the enormous amount of hate speech, attitudes, and crimes directed towards Asians, Jews, women and gays within the black community. When do they ever "call out" any black person for wrongdoings against other marganilized groups?

Posted by andrewsu on 2014-01-12 21:48:18

The Left has been captured by Social Justice Warriors, who are permitted to attack a person for being white and female and smear us with all kinds of accusations on the basis of our gender and ethnicity.

Nobody who has been attacked by Mikki Kendall will be permitted a soap box to speak out against her - not at Jezebel, not at the Nation, not at Mother Jones and not even at NPR.

Thanks to her campaign of flat-out bigotry known as #solidarityisforwhitewomen Kendall has been promoted to junior celebrity by the Left.

It's disgusting.

Kendall is a full-time hater, and she's a horrible "journalist" too, not only blaming white women for everything but with "Abortion Saved My Life" she accused a doctor of trying to kill her - with NO EVIDENCE whatsoever except her own paranoid suspicions.

It's a disgrace that In These Times is promoting that hater.

This is the stupid random bigotry Kendall likes to say about white women:

I think you can't be intersectional if anyone from a group has to walk in with an apology for who they are. Its seems you are apologizing for yourself for being white. Why should anyone have to stop and put a note that basically says "I know I don't quite have a right to talk. Here I am and I'm trying really hard although I am already apologizing. I'm white, you know." That's not creating an intersectional environment. What you are, your race, your sex, your gender, etc should not be a footnote of apology.

Posted by Sam on 2014-01-05 03:15:52

And here you see her biggest motivator:

"There’s crazy money to be made in media, in consulting and in speaking. Everyone wants to be an “expert.”

She ought to get a gig from FOX network, because they hate white feminists too.

Her brand is hating white feminists. There are always vague claims about those white feminists who hoard power. As everyone knows, feminists are rich. And there are white feminists rubbing their palms together to keep black feminists from getting attention - in her branding, that is. The people working for feminist organizations are sooooo rolling in money and power. All of the feminist foundations and big publications I know have a diversity of people in leadership. And these orgs are few and most have little money. On the big blogs for young feminists, all have a diversity of contributors and editors - ALL OF THEM. On many, whites are the minority of editors.

And then she mentions there are those white feminists that diminished black feminists online. However, you can't find them. Google and try to find a blog entry on how black feminists just don't fit into feminism or how they should not have power. In the comments section, try to find a racial insult flinged at a black commentator. I haven't seen one. However. Do a google search on white feminist and all you get is hate and scorn written by a group who wants hate to be their brand. Even in the description lines of their blogs, they out and out say they are against white feminists. They publish incorrect quotes attributed to white feminists at times and no one corrects them. They compose cartoons with people like Gloria S being made to say things she never said. But in their hate echo chamber, you can't have a conversation. And if they gave up the hate, they wouldn't have a brand. Their unity is hate and division, not intersectional at all.

If you go on a blog described as being against white feminism, and somehow you've disclosed that you are white, all sorts of name calling and insults are allowed. Vulgar things. A woman would get treated better on a gamer's blog. They work to normalize the expression of hate to whites and then say they can't be racist. Now, I'm not talking about some sort of thoughtful critique of some thought of a white feminist, I'm talking about vulgarities and flaming and tolerating lies even with incorrect quotes and such. And if anyone tries to interject the hate party, they are asked if they are white, they must be white if they disagree in comments.

I wonder when she sits by a white feminist or is interviewed by one whether she says, "oh, I don't mean YOU, you're one of the good ones." Did she say THAT to Kathleen. Maybe she said "I don't think of you as a color."

When you use the term for a person's race as a sneer, you are a hater. You can put footnotes "Oh, not you" or "I mean some historical context" but truly you are painting the whole race with hate by using the term "white feminist" with a sneer. It makes me hope that the internet is cached for the next generations. The legacy of promoting hate and working against unity and intersectionality is not one to be proud of. And maybe if some white kids get born, adopted into her family and want to be feminists, she'll say "oh, not you, I don't mean you, you're one of the good ones."

Posted by Rickie on 2014-01-05 02:38:06

Great piece.

Posted by DJ on 2014-01-03 14:38:33

I think your question is valid, but to date we have not struggled together. We've been the "feminist movement" and "the GLBT movement" and "the racial equality movement", each neglecting the others.

The point is, people with different contexts that overlap will all get further in their struggles if they don't ignore the fact that not everyone is fighting the exact same struggle they are, and that they need to be open minded and accepting and look to learn from other people's contexts instead of denying them. There are similar difficulties at the intersection of race and GLBT, and GLBT and feminism. There are idiots who argue that it shouldn't be "feminism" or "gay rights" or whatever, it should be "humanism" (never mind that humanism is an entirely different philosophy...) They make that argument to try to shut us all down... But they do illustrate a valid point: the ultimate goal of all these movements is to lift us all up. They are all (distinct and critical) sub-movements of one final objective. And there is a tremendous amount of intersectionality. None of these movements will ever truly succeed until they all succeed. Being respectful of the others and trying to lift them up as we all rise will only help us. (By "us" I'm speaking a a white feminist who is trying really hard to study and understand and respect all these intersecting movements.)

Posted by Tara on 2014-01-02 21:10:42

So its impossible for people with different "contexts" to struggle together?